


Sleeping Arrangements

by TheStraggletag



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 05:02:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9532634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStraggletag/pseuds/TheStraggletag
Summary: Royce Gold finds himself suffering from sleep-deprivation following the departure of his son to college. Finding that his fear of abandonment is keeping him from a restful night of sleep he seeks out a fellow insomniac to share a bed with. Nothing romantic or complicated, merely a mutually-beneficial arrangement.Strictly platonic, or so he tells himself. Over and over.





	

After Zelena Greene he’d given up on the whole idea, or so he’d thought. Insomnia might be deeply unpleasant, but it didn’t come close to crazy redheads with abandonment issues and elbows like arrowheads. He had considered briefly going back to Hopper’s office and making a weekly appointment, like the good doctor had suggested. Though timid he was competent enough… he’d certainly hit the nail on the head when it came to diagnosing the origin of his sleeplessness. Even though he prided himself on being observant it had completely escaped him that his restless nights had started roughly around the time Neal had gone off to college. And he certainly hadn’t realised that he’d never lived alone. He’d gone from his papa’s unloving arms to the warm home of his ants and from there to a dingy one-bedroom flat with Milah and later a spacious, sprawling Queen Anne, which he’d shared with his son when Milah up and left them. Left them like his father had, or his mother before him. Left him like Cora did afterwards, after a brief affair that did everything to advance her own agenda and little to make him feel wanted and loved.

So it was natural, Hopper said, to feel Neal’s absence as his son abandoning him, even though on a rational, conscious level he knew it not to be true. And though at first Royce had refuted the idea- how dare Hopper blame his son- after a while he recalled suffering from insomnia as a child, right after his father had dumped him on his aunts’s modest house in the middle of the night, while he’d still been asleep. The notion that it would happen again, that he’d close his eyes and be left alone again, terrified him. He’d been convinced that if he slept his aunts would be gone when he woke up so he didn’t. Eventually they’d realised and to reassure him they took turns sleeping with him on his bed till he’d left the fear of abandonment behind. Or so he’d thought.

Hopper had been ecstatic after such a break through and, at first, so had Gold. Until the psychiatrist mentioned weekly appointments, a “long and arduous journey” and some nonsense about confronting his demons. Royce had no intention of opening the Pandora Box he’d carefully constructed inside his mind, not by a long shot. Reviving his childhood trauma appealed to him as much as taking a bath in acid. He’d attempted to have Hopper prescribe sleeping pills instead. Anything over the counter was a waste of time, as he’d found out the hard way, but surely hard drugs would do the trick. The good doctor, however, would not comply. Not even after a thin-veiled threat to raise his rent had made him cough up the necessary prescription.

With no other recourse he’d done some research on the Internet. After wading through a mountain of unhelpful-and in some instances incredibly unpleasant- information he’d found a forum for people suffering from insomnia because, like himself, they weren’t used to sleeping alone. There he’d found a thread about an app called _Bedbuds_ \- he cringed at the rather unpleasant play on words- which worked as a dating app but instead of romantic partners it paired up sleeping partners, as in, people who wanted to literally sleep together. It seemed to be very popular with people with anxiety, people who’d moved far away from home, introverts and the like and to many people with insomnia, apparently, it worked like a charm. Reluctantly he set up a profile for himself, answering questions as innocuous as his height and weight and some others much more intrusive. In the end there had been very few people the app had found living near his area and, after much debate, he’d finally decided to take the plunge and match himself with “Greenie”, a woman in her thirties living in a nearby town forty-five minutes away.

It had been an unmitigated disaster. Zelena Green was a nightmare. Chatty and brash, with a strident, nails-on-chalkboard laugh and no respect for personal space. She wore make-up to sleep, even though she made a show of pretending to wash it off in the bathroom every night, an array of dominatrix-style nighties in horrible shades of green and had elbows that could cut glass. She was all hard planes and painful angles, unpleasant to cuddle with or even lay next to- she drenched herself in perfume too, the kind that made his nose itch- and after a week he called it quits. Zelena didn’t take it well, at all, and so he’d changed his phone number and had carefully threatened her to leave him alone. He’d sent Dove to do that. The man looked like the worst kind of thug, the sort that lugged dead bodies in the dead of the night without batting an eye. In reality he was depressingly soft-hearted and sensible, utterly incapable of hurting a fly. Thankfully no one would know by looking at him.

After that unpleasant experience he’d dismissed the idea altogether and had gone to a psychiatrist in Boston more than willing to prescribe him something for his problem. And though he slept, he didn’t rest. He felt sluggish in the mornings, irritable and dazed. The medication gave left him nauseous most of the morning, reducing his breakfast to a simple cup of tea and some dry toast. He lasted a month like that before he flushed the pills down the drain. At Dove’s behest he tried homeopathic medicine but, though a much more pleasant medicine, it had little to no effect.

It was when he found himself considering going back to Hopper’s office and passive-aggressively taking his suggestion that he remembered _Bedbuds_. Though Zelena had been an unmitigated disaster Royce acknowledged that the idea itself appealed to him the most out of everything he’d tried. He’d hated most of what came with being married to Milah but it had been wonderful to cuddle up to her at night, to lose himself in the embrace of another. Besides there was little he wouldn’t do to keep himself from sitting in front of the ever-jumpy Hopper and spilling his guts about his uncaring parents and his failed love-life.

There was a new profile in his area. Someone in Storybrooke in fact. A young woman in her early thirties, a bit shorter than him who preferred the opposite side of the bed, loved to read and watch period dramas and like soft, plush beds. A spinster in the making, it sounded, but it didn’t much matter. Not willing to waste time or talk himself out of it he arranged for a public meeting at the local park, taking the precaution to ask Dove to linger nearby in case there was any need. Dove loved feeding the ducks anyway.

He’d expected a mousy brunette with a skirt past her knees and a demure cardigan. Belle French was indeed a brunette, though her hair was glossy and had a red tint to it when the light hit it at just the right angle, and when he met her she was indeed wearing a skirt and a cardigan. But the skirt, a lovely tweed flare number very expensive-looking, was just shy of indecent and the open tweed blazer she’d paired it up with was offset by a sheer floral blouse, making her look both prim and risque. And she was lovely, from an entirely objective point of view. Her body had pleasing, gentle curves, and her features were delicate, almost elfin. None of it mattered, though he imagined it was better that he not find his potential bed mate too scary to look at.

Remembering his past experience with Zelena he gave short, perfunctory answers to Miss French’s questions and made it clear that all he was interested at the moment was a one-time trial run. Thankfully she seemed to consider it a great idea and so they made arrangements for Thursday night. He let Dove know, just in case, and made sure to have the linens changed and a fresh set of pyjamas ready. Miss French was refreshingly punctual and indulged in a bit of small talk and a glass of wine before suggesting they retire for the night. He gave her free use of a guest bathroom and was pleased to notice when she met him in his room that she had scrubbed her face free of make-up- though with a complexion like hers no woman would mind going bare-faced- and had donned an old college t-shirt- Columbia, he was dully impressed- and some comfortable shorts.

It was stiff at first, sharing a bed with her, a virtual stranger. Zelena had all but pounced on him the moment she delved under the sheets but Miss French kept to her side of the bed, looking at him in an open, welcoming way. As if she’d sensed his misgivings and his naturally prickly exterior and was waiting him out, allowing him to set the pace. He thought at first to simply stay on his side but he didn’t particularly feel the reassurance he was supposed to be feeling. In the end he scooted closer to the middle and slowly, so slowly, he snaked an arm around her waist. Miss French- Belle- smiled and turned around, scooting back till her back was pressing against his front. And it was… wonderful. She was soft in all the right places, sweet-smelling and warm, so warm. His arm tightened around her, his legs seeking to tangle with hers, to bask in the abundance of human contact. She was lose and pliant in his arms, no hint of tension or revulsion, not an ounce of rejection to be felt. She wiggled slightly and when she was finally fitted perfectly in his arms made a low, humming sound of satisfaction that he echoed, moving his head to be able to bury his nose in her hair. Gradually he found himself matching his breathing to hers, feeling his entire body slowly relax as his mind cleared and his eyes closed of their own accord.

* * *

He woke up to the sound of Love of my Life coming from Belle’s cellphone. Unwillingly he cracked his eyes open, taking stock of his limbs. Sometime during the night they’d shifted positions, with Belle moving to lie on her back, her body curved slightly towards Royce. His head was resting gently on her chest, one hand flung over her waist to keep her there. Both her arms were cradling him close, the perfect sort of morning cuddle to start the day. Belle was as good a pillow as she was a teddy bear and, since she made no motion to push him away, he allowed himself to linger a few minutes on top of her, enjoying the way she absent-minded combed the ends of his long hair.

With great reluctance he disentangled himself from her, his loose limbs barely cooperating as he made his way to the bathroom. His overworked body was demanding more sleep, nowhere near caught up, but he had a busy day ahead of him and so did Belle, he imagined. By the time he was fully dressed so was she, donning jogging pants and an old Ziggy Stardust t-shirt. A woman wearing yesterday’s clothes and walking home early in the morning was bound to make people suspicious, but a woman on her way home from a morning run in the woods was perfectly respectable.

“This was lovely, Mr Gold. Best sleep I’ve had in months.”

He envied her casual, easy attitude. Even though they’d spent a lovely night together in bed he found himself awkward and shy outside it.

“Yes, indeed. Have a good day, Miss French.”

He smile dimmed a bit, her eyes loosing a bit of their lovely shine, but she said her good-byes politely and stepped out into the backyard, peaking from the fence door to make sure no one was about. He stayed inside the house, struggling to make himself talk, to take action.

“And perhaps we can do this again on Sunday?”

She turned around, her lips curling into a relieved, radiant smile.

“I’d like that very much. See you Sunday, Mr Gold.”

She darted out, trotting in the direction of the forest trail before he could tell her to call him Royce.


End file.
